Google Drive Update Effects Google+ Photos

Today Google announced that it’s unifying storage across its products. It’s a small, yet important update, as it will likely make Google Drive more useful. However, it could also impact those of you that upload photos to Google+ on a regular basis.

Previously you had to track your available storage on Google products separately. Rolling out over the coming weeks, everyone will get a combined 15GB of shared storage across Drive, Google+ Photos, and Gmail.

This won’t matter much if you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on Drive content. But if you frequently bump against your limits across all products, this could be a problem. Too much data in Gmail or Drive will limit the number of photos you can store on Google+.

Photos, in general, are powerful storytellers, but Google+ has been encouraging its members to upload higher quality, full-size images to their profiles and pages for optimal engagement. It’s easy to run out of space when high-resolution images are involved.

To help you keep a closer eye on your storage usage, Google will be making updates to the Google Drive storage page. Here you’ll get a clearer understanding of how you’re using your storage space. If you’re not careful, heavy photo-sharers could max out.

You can still add more storage to your account, but the cheapest option is now 100GB for $4.99 per month. The company removed the 25GB/$2.49 option — there’s no word on what will happen to individuals currently subscribed to that plan.

[Updated 5/17:] Google announced that over the coming weeks, all Google Apps users will get 30 GB of unified storage to use between Drive and Gmail. Any files created in Docs, Sheets, and Slides won’t count against your storage quota. Storage will also be shared with photos you upload to Google+ larger than 2048px.

Jennifer Beese: Jennifer Beese has worked as a community manager and social media strategist. When she’s not writing, you can find her studying anatomy and physiology—she literally has a skeleton in her closet—or under the stars with her telescope.

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